Tagged / psychology

Congratulations to Dr. Karim Khaled and colleagues

international, PG research

Congratulations to Dr Karim Khaled on the recent publication of the article ‘The Association between Psychological Stress and Dietary Quality and Patterns among Women of Childbearing Age in Lebanon‘.
The paper focuses on psychological stress linked to poorer dietary quality can lead to serious diseases. The objective of this study was to examine the association between psychological stress and dietary quality/patterns among childbearing-aged women in Lebanon. Female participants (n = 249) participated in an online survey-questionnaire which included the previously adapted European Prospective into Cancer and Nutrition food frequency questionnaire and stress, depression, anxiety, physical activity, adiposity, and socio-demographic questions.
The a-priori dietary quality was assessed through the Mediterranean Diet (MD) index. The a-posteriori latent dietary-patterns (DPs) were derived through factor analysis. Regression analysis was performed to investigate the predictors of the DPs. Participants mainly had a medium MD adherence (61%). No association was found between stress and MD adherence. Factor analysis revealed four DPs: “potatoes, vegetables, legumes, soups and sauces, and non-alcoholic beverages” (DP1), “cereals, fats and oils, milk and dairy products, and sugars and snacks” (DP2), “alcoholic beverages, fish and seafood, eggs, and meats and meat products” (DP3), and “fruits and nuts and seeds” (DP4). Regression analysis indicated that DP1 was positively associated with monthly income (p = 0.02) and negatively with mother’s educational level (p = 0.03). DP2 was negatively associated with father’s employment status (p = 0.01) and marital status (p = 0.008). DP3 was negatively associated with higher father’s educational level (p = 0.018), but positively with BMI (p < 0.001). DP4 was positively linked with BMI (p = 0.01).
Further studies are needed to investigate the association between psychological stress and dietary quality/patterns among Lebanese childbearing aged women.
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
  1. Khaled, K., Hundley, V., Bassil, M., Bazzi, M., Tsofliou, F. (2024) The Association between Psychological Stress and Dietary Quality and Patterns among Women of Childbearing Age in Lebanon. Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 8(9): 8-20.

 

 

Conversation article: Is there such a thing as an objectively beautiful building? Here’s the science

Professor Sine McDougall co-authors this article for The Conversation about whether beauty matters in housing policy and what makes a beautiful building…

Is there such a thing as an objectively beautiful building? Here’s the science

BalkansCat/Shutterstock

Irene Reppa, Swansea University and Siné McDougall, Bournemouth University

Some people assume that there’s a type of beauty that everyone can agree on. But did early humans really admire slender bodies the way we do today? After all, fashions come and go – there’s been plenty of fads throughout history that we find hard to understand today.

The UK’s deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, recently suggested “beautiful” needs to be removed from the government’s housing policy on the grounds it is too subjective. She said in an interview that “beautiful means nothing really, it means one thing to one person and another thing to another”.

She isn’t alone. Many people support the notion, first stated by the Irish novellist Margeret Wolfe Hungerford, that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

But is this true? The current state of our knowledge on aesthetics, and specifically what we consider beautiful, is a mosaic of empirical discoveries. For over 150 years, psychologists have run carefully controlled experiments to determine whether an attribute, such as a particular colour, shape or melody is beautiful.

Some rules have emerged, but none are universal: for instance, the golden rectangle ratio in geometry, which denotes a rectangle with the height to width being 1:1.6. Although considered beautiful by some in objects such as buildings or windows, these dimensions are an uncommon choice for bathroom tiles or books.

Research has shown that our experiences of finding things visually appealing are an integral, and often unconscious, part of the way we perceive objects in the world around us. It takes approximately 50 milliseconds, the blink of an eye, to reliably decide whether or not we think an object is beautiful.

Familiarity is an important factor. When something is seen or heard often, it is easier for our nervous system (our vision and hearing) to process it. And this ease can be misattributed as beauty. This also explains how trends in beauty emerge – if we keep seeing and celebrating a certain type of face, it becomes familiar.

Beauty comes about in different ways, and whether something is considered beautiful can depend on attributes of the person doing the looking, such as their prior experiences, expertise and attitudes; whether it hangs in a museum or along a hospital corridor; as well as attributes of the object itself, such as its shape, colour, proportions or size.

Beauty can therefore arise from good design. When people deal with an easy-to-use object or interface, they like it more than hard-to-use counterparts. Easy-to-use objects often have visual characteristics such as clear balance, clarity and good contrast.

Does beauty matter in housing policy?

Discussions about beauty are a healthy state of affairs, until they start coming into discussions about housing policy.

A beautiful building can bring joy and contentment in everyday life. Beautiful, well-designed homes can significantly enhance the mental health of the inhabitants.
Attractive, well-built surroundings can reduce stress, increase feelings of happiness, and contribute to a sense of peace and contentment.

This may be why there’s increasing evidence that taking small doses of psychedelics in a controlled environment such as a clinic, which produce intense experiences of beauty, can help treat depression.

A beautiful building means that someone cared to do that little bit extra. This may be meaningful to the kid growing up in social housing, offering a sense of pride and belonging. Aesthetic appeal in housing and neighbourhoods may lead to civic pride, where residents take collective responsibility for maintaining and improving their environment.

Pride may lead to stronger, more vibrant communities, and idea that came to life in modern times by the “city beautiful movement” in the US (1890–1920). “Mean streets make mean people,” wrote the movement’s leading theorist, Charles Mulford Robinson.

Amsterdam Het Schip
Amsterdam Het Schip. Beautiful?
harry_nl/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Beauty in housing is not just about aesthetics; it often coincides with functionality. Good design considers the usability and comfort of spaces, ensuring that they are both beautiful and practical. This balance can improve the quality of life for residents by making spaces more efficient and pleasant to live in.

Beauty can also boost perseverance. When searching for information on a website, perseverance – the amount of time users keep searching for difficult to find information – increases when the website is independently rated as aesthetically pleasing.

Similarly, when dealing with an electronic device, people try for longer to make it work if they find it aesthetically pleasing.

People are also willing to work harder to continue viewing a face they find beautiful, even it isn’t accompanied with any other reward.

Beauty also demands copies of itself. Historically, in art and design, thought-to-be beautiful landscapes, faces, or vases have been copied in different forms. The act of drawing, sculpting, writing about, composing about a beautiful object is to make a copy of it.

Don’t dis-invest from beauty

The subjectivity of beauty does not necessitate disinvestment from it. Beauty does mean something, even if it isn’t totally objective. Attempting to bring beauty into our everyday lives, no matter that we each have a unique perspective, as in the case of housing, would mean investing in the human experience for all.

So while beauty is to some extent subjective, artful design can play a crucial role in various aspects of our lives, from psychological well-being to social cohesion and even economic value. Industry giants such as Ikea and Apple have been reaping the benefits of applying this knowledge to their business model for decades.

Why build beautiful homes in the first place? Having the human experience in mind when building houses and neighbourhoods, remembering the immense impact that something well designed and decorated can have is a worthwhile investment in humanity.

If removing the term beautiful from housing policy helps build more homes, then that’s great. But, when it comes to actually building them – whether the term “beautiful” occurs in policy or not – it is certainly worth to consider investing in beauty.The Conversation

Irene Reppa, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Swansea University and Siné McDougall, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Congratulation on new interdisciplinary publication

international, Women's Academic Network, writing

Congratulation to Dr. Orlanda Harvey (Social Work), Dr. Terri Cole (Psychology) and Dr. Jane Healy (Criminology) who in collaboration with Jade Levell, a colleague at the University of Bristol, had their article ‘Explorations of attitudes towards accessibility and accessing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) perpetrator support programmes by victim-survivors and perpetrators across five European countries’ accepted by the journal Abuse: An International Impact Journal [1].  This paper reports on an international mixed-methods study exploring victim-survivors and perpetrators’ attitudes towards perpetrator support programmes. The study includes a questionnaire survey of victim-survivors and interviews with male perpetrators conducted in five European countries.

Results showed that of the 93 victim-survivors of domestic violence and abuse, half stated they would have stayed in their relationship with perpetrators if the abuse had stopped, and a similar number reported that they believed their relationships would have been different had there been help for the perpetrator. Analysis of perpetrator interviews showed that they faced barriers to obtaining support, such as being labelled a ‘perpetrator’ which, had they been addressed, may have enhanced their engagement with services. Whilst acknowledging the need for safeguarding and justice, this paper demonstrates the importance of reflecting both victim-survivor and perpetrator needs in order for perpetrators to fully engage with support services. Moreover, it highlighted the need to address the underlying societal issues related to hegemonic masculinity, which can lead to the abuse of women being normalised and the vulnerability of men being stigmatised, through education for young people around healthy relationships.

 

Congratulations

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Reference:

Harvey H.,  Cole T., Levell, J., Healy J. (2024) ‘Explorations of attitudes towards accessibility and accessing domestic violence and abuse (DVA) perpetrator support programmes by victim-survivors and perpetrators across five European countries’,  Abuse: An International Impact Journal 5(1): 26-45    https://doi.org/10.37576/abuse.2024.055

Conversation article: Four ways to eat less meat that are better for the planet, your health and your bank balance

Professor Katherine Appleton and Danielle Guy write for The Conversation about the simple food swaps that have the greatest benefits environmentally and for your health…

Four ways to eat less meat that are better for the planet, your health and your bank balance

Making a few simple eco-friendly food choices can be healthy and cost-effective too.
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

Katherine Appleton, Bournemouth University and Danielle Guy, Bournemouth University

Do I choose the meat in my local store or drive out of town for tofu instead? Shall I add honey to my winter porridge or would strawberries or mango be better? Should I choose to drink oat milk or organic goat’s milk?

Most people are familiar with the idea that food consumption will affect their health. But food consumption also contributes between 20% and 30% of the environmental footprint from daily life, with impacts from production, processing, transport and retail. For many of us, our diet could be healthier and more sustainable, but it can be hard to know which options will have the biggest positive effect.

As part of our research into healthy and sustainable eating, interviews with predominantly young adults found that UK consumers are willing to make small changes that would improve the health and environmental footprint of their diet, if these changes will have some benefit and are of little cost to them. Small dietary changes tend to be easier to maintain in the longer term than larger changes, but the small changes to make for greatest benefit, for health and the planet, are not well known.

To provide this advice, we compared the health-related, environmental and financial effects of a number of sustainable dietary actions that have previously been proposed. We applied 12 sustainable actions to the dietary data of 1,235 UK adults in the National Diet and Nutrition Survey.

We investigated differences between the new diet and the original diet for six dietary markers (protein, saturated fat, sugars, salt, iron, calcium), three environmental markers (greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater withdrawals, land use), and dietary cost. There were some limitations – we couldn’t quantify the impacts of reducing food waste, for example.

But our research showed that four simple switches resulted in the greatest benefits for your diet, the planet and for your pocket. These changes won’t be small or simple for everyone, but you don’t need to try them all. Every switch will benefit both your health and our home, and lots of small changes will soon add up.

1. Replace meat items with pulses

Beans, chickpeas and lentils are high in protein, fibre and are low in fat. They have low environmental impacts and can even benefit the growth of other crops, plus they are very inexpensive. Barriers that prevent people consuming pulses tend to focus around their taste or texture. And pulses can be perceived as inconvenient, effortful or difficult to cook.

Start with houmous – a tasty pre-prepared chickpea spread or dip. Including more pulses in your diet is made easier and quicker by using pre-prepared and canned pulses or by batch cooking dishes and freezing portions for another day. Try incorporating canned beans into your favourite soups and stews. Add lentils to your bolognese sauce. If you’re feeling more adventurous, experiment with some tasty new recipes from cultures that traditionally use pulses, such as Mexico, the Middle East or India.

Flatlay shot looking down over a dozen or so colourful bowls of different beans, pulses, legumes
Replacing the meat in your diet with a diverse array of pulses is good for your health as well as for the planet.
Nopparat Promtha/Shutterstock

2. Replace meat items with eggs

Eggs, like pulses, are highly nutritious. They provide protein and many micronutrients, have low environmental impacts, and are good value for money. Choose free-range eggs for added animal welfare benefits.

Eggs can be easy to prepare. They are soft and can be easier to eat for those who may have difficulties chewing, swallowing or cutting up foods. Eggs can add taste and flavour to your diet. Eggs can be consumed at any meal. Poached or scrambled, they make a great high-protein breakfast, hard-boiled eggs are a filling on-the-go snack, and sous-vide (slow-cooked) eggs can impress guests at dinner parties.

3. Replace meat items with hard or soft cheeses

Cheese is another nutritious food, full of calcium and other micronutrients, good for strong bones and teeth. Often considered a food with high environmental impacts, cheese typically has a lower environmental footprint than meat, even more so for soft cheeses.

The environmental impact of dairy foods increases with the processing needed, predominantly as a result of the waste created at each stage of manufacture. Milk has the lowest environmental impact, yoghurt slightly higher, soft cheeses, such as cream cheese, slightly higher again, and hard cheeses such as Cheddar are higher still.

Try switching your pepperoni pizza for four cheeses pizza, replace the meat in pasta dishes for soft blue cheese to retain flavour, and use soft cheeses in sandwiches.

4. Reduce meat consumption by 20%

Meat production, particularly for beef and lamb, has high environmental impacts. Consuming a lot can be unhealthy, but meat consumption in small amounts can offer a valuable source of protein and micronutrients, including iron, zinc and B vitamins. Try consuming smaller portions, increase the quality of meat you buy to gain the health benefits while eating less, or aim to have regular vegetarian days, such as meat-free Mondays. Choose the meat option when you’re eating out, make it a treat for special occasions, and eat more plant-based dishes at home.

Imagine weekly climate newsletter

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.The Conversation

Katherine Appleton, Professor of Psychology, Bournemouth University and Danielle Guy, PhD Candidate in Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Postdoc Appreciation Week: Enabling insights into reading behaviour

This week is UK Postdoc Appreciation Week and we are celebrating and showcasing the achievements of our postdoctoral researchers and their important contribution to research at BU. 

Today’s post is by Dr Julie Kirkby and Professor Marcin Budka about the work of Postdoctoral Researcher in Machine Learning for the Modelling of Eye Movements Thomas Mercier… 

Enabling Insights into Reading Behaviour and related Pathologies through Eye-Tracking Technology and Machine Learning

In the past decades, eye-tracking technology has emerged as an invaluable tool for uncovering the cognitive processes involved in reading by offering unique insights into individuals’ reading patterns. This technique involves measuring an individual’s gaze position on a computer screen over time with high accuracy to reveal critical information about where and how long their eyes are fixating while navigating text. This provides essential clues about mental processes at play during the act of reading.

Eye-Tracking Technology in Reading Research:

The data collected from eye-tracking technology has proven valuable not only for studying general reading behaviour but also specific disorders such as dyslexia. By examining an individual’s eye movements during a reading task, researchers can better understand the cognitive mechanisms engaged in comprehending written material and potentially improve interventions for those who struggle with reading due to neurological differences or other factors. Additionally, this technology has been used to gain insight into accessibility-related issues of visual stimuli such as web pages.

Challenges in Eye-Tracking Data Analysis: Line Assignment and Measurement Noise

While technological advancements have enabled the recording of gaze points during reading with high accuracy, raw eye-tracking data still requires post-processing to identify which gaze positions are part of fixations (periods of relative positional stability) and which are part of saccades (rapid ballistic eye-movements). Furthermore, for most data analysis in reading research these fixations need to be assigned to an area of interest in the reading stimulus, such as a character or word, depending on the experiment design.

This line assignment can become significantly more difficult when dealing with multi-line passages of text, usually requiring laborious manual correction. The assignment process is made non-trivial by noise present in the tracking data due to factors such as loss of calibration during an experiment, subtle head movements or pupil dilation. Such measurement noise may manifest as dynamically changing vertical drift of recorded gaze positions, causing them to appear closer to lines above or below the actual line being read.

Attempts have been made to create algorithms that automate the line assignment process to enable researchers to carry out larger studies involving multi-line reading experiments that more closely resemble reading as it would happen outside the lab. However, these techniques often lack sufficient accuracy and reliability, leading to manual correction remaining the gold standard for addressing noise in eye-tracking fixation data.

Julie Kirkby (Department of Psychology) and Marcin Budka (Department of Computing and Informatics) are working with post-doctoral researcher Thomas Mercier, to tackle this noise correction/lines assignment problem using modern machine learning algorithms. This works by utilising deep neural networks that work directly on sequences of fixations and assign each of them to their most appropriate line of text.

Thanks to the rich and diverse datasets from previous studies carried out at BU, Thomas was able to train such a model to outperform all previously published methods of automatic line assignment. This new model is highly consistent across all datasets, unlike previous models, which makes our model a robust, default choice that will automate this task and enable researchers across psychology and the cognitive sciences to carry out and analyse eye-tracking studies with larger amounts of text without being limited by the bottleneck of manual line assignments or the need to test multiple models.

As a result, Thomas’s work represents an important step forward in advancing our understanding of cognitive processes through improved methodologies for analysing large volumes of text-based eye-tracking data (paper currently under review in the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, a high impact journal).

Thomas will make the current code public and follow up with a publication focusing on usability of the program for non-machine learning researchers. Thomas is currently extending this model, to include diagnosing specific disorders such as dyslexia and schizophrenia.

If you’d like to write a blog post to share your appreciation for our postdoctoral researchers, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk. You can also get involved on social media during Postdoc Appreciation Week by using #LovePostdocs and #NPAW2023 on Twitter and Instagram and tagging us @BU_Research or @UK_NPAW.

Dementia research in Nepal

international

Yesterday (April 11th) Dr. Bibha Simkhada presented key findings from our research project on ‘Cultural practice and policy in dementia care in Nepal’.  She spoke at the ‘Ninth National Summit of Health and Population Scientists in Nepal’.  This annual health summit in Kathmandu is organised by the NHRC (Nepal Health Research Council).  Dr. Simkhada, who is Visiting Faculty in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS), started this work whilst at Bournemouth University, before she moved to the University of Huddersfield to become a Senior Lecturer in Nursing.  This project is a cross-faculty collaboration with Dr. Shanti Shanker in the Department of Psychology.

This qualitative study comprising four face-to-face interviews and four focus groups with carers, health workers and other stakeholders.  The two key conclusion she presented are:

  • Stigma and stereotyping around dementia needs addressing. Nepal needs better policies, guidelines and service provision for people living with dementia and their carers.
  • There is need for inclusion of Dementia/Alzheimer education in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula of nurses, doctors and allied health professionals in Nepal.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)

 

Congratulations to Dr. Tsofliou & Prof. Appleton on latest interdisciplinary paper

international, open access, PG research, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to BU’s interdisciplinary nutrition-behavioural sciences team that published the recent review “Barriers and Facilitators Associated with the Adoption of and Adherence to a Mediterranean Style Diet in Adults: A Systematic Review of Published Observational and Qualitative Studies” [1] in the journal Nutrients.  The academics are based in two different faculties, namely the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences and the Faculty of Science & Technology, represented by Dr. Fotini Tsofliou and Prof Katherine Appleton respectively.  Two BU students (recently graduated) are also two co-authors: Dimitrios Vlachos (who completed the MRes) and Christina Hughes (MSc Nutrition & Behaviour).

This review which is Open Access includes all studies investigating barriers or facilitators to adopting or adhering to a Mediterranean style diet in adults aged 18 years old and over.  The paper identified  financial, cognitive, socio-cultural, motivational, lifestyle, accessibility & availability, sensory and hedonic and demographic factors. Similar barriers and facilitators are often reported in relation to healthy eating or the consumption of specific healthy foods, with a few exceptions. These exceptions detailed concerns with specific components of the MedDiet; considerations due to culture and traditions, and concerns over a cooler climate. Suggestions for overcoming these barriers and facilitators specific to adoption and adherence to the Mediterranean diet are offered. 

Well done!  nutrients-logo

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. Tsofliou F, Vlachos D, Hughes C, Appleton KM. Barriers and Facilitators Associated with the Adoption of and Adherence to a Mediterranean Style Diet in Adults: A Systematic Review of Published Observational and Qualitative Studies. Nutrients. 2022; 14(20):4314. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14204314

The Friday Prof-ile: John McAlaney

Welcome to The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick. 

John McAlaney

John McAlaney

This week, we’re chatting with Professor in Psychology, John McAlaney…

What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?  

My research looks at how and why people choose to engage in risky behaviours, with a focus on how this is influenced by social processes. As part of this I do work on a range of topics including hacking, digital addiction, fake news and online gambling.

More broadly I am interested in how to challenge misperceptions that people have about those around them.

Often as humans we assume that our peers behave and think is much more negative way than is actually the case. By documenting these misperceptions and presenting them back to a target population you empower people to make informed decisions, which is known as the social norms approach.

I am drawn to this approach because, unlike some other behaviour change approaches, it does not dictate to people how they should behave.

What has been your career highlight to date?  

Being invited to 10 Downing Street in 2012 to talk about how we can use technology to implement the social norms approach and to counter harmful stereotypes about young people.

What are you working on at the moment?  

The biggest project I am involved in at the moment is a GambleAware funded project on behaviour change and transparency in online gambling. As part of this work I have recently been the academic lead on BU’s successful application to be included on the Gambling Commission’s Research, Education and Treatment (RET) list. We are the first university in the UK to be included on this list, and only the second in the world. Our inclusion on this list opens up many opportunities for us to continue research into ways to address the harms caused by problematic gambling.

I am also working on several projects relating to cybersecurity. This work is the basis of my ongoing participant as an academic expert in the UN Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes.

If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?

I’ve always been interested in architecture, although I have terrible design skills. If that didn’t work out for me then I’d probably become a dog walker.

What do you do to unwind? 

Reading is something I find very relaxing – I would like to claim that I only reads the classics, but usually the more stressful a day I have the trashier my choice of book.

What’s the best thing about Bournemouth? 

I’m lucky to live within walking distance of the beach, which is great. I think I would struggle to live anywhere other than the coast now. Being from Scotland I still find the weather of the south coast to be a nice change.

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?  

As someone who loves going to new places but dislikes the act of travel I would definitely choose teleportation.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you? 

It would have to be my Kindle. I could happily pass the years by sitting, reading under a palm tree.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Very few things in life actually matter that much. That probably sounds quite nihilistic, but it an idea I increasingly embrace as I get older. Most of the dramas we have in our lives are things we won’t even remember in 10 years. Sometimes you are ahead, sometimes you are behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. Also, wear sunscreen.

Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine translated into Greek

international, Publishing, writing

The popular medical textbook ‘Psychology & Sociology Applied to Medicine’ published by Elsevier has been translated into Greek.  This 2022 Greek addition was, published last month, was preceded by a Spanish translation last year.  Elsevier’s website call this fourth edition of the textbook, the “definitive and popular introduction to human behaviour in the context of health and illness includes three new chapters, many new contributors and a new co-editor. It is arranged in nine sections to cover the core concepts of psychology and sociology as they apply to medicine.”

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Exciting event alert! Online 5-7 November. Register till is not too late…

We are super excited to confirm that registration for #BESC2020 (7th International Conference on Behavioural and Social Computing), hosted by Bournemouth University, is now open. BESC aims to become a premier forum in which academic researchers and industry practitioners from data mining, artificial intelligence, statistics and analytics, business and marketing, finance and politics, and behavioral, economic, social and psychological sciences could present updated research efforts and progresses on foundational and emerging interdisciplinary topics of BESC, exchange new ideas and identify future research directions.

#BESC2020 attracted a range of exciting work around interdisciplinary field of behavioural and social computing. All accepted and presented papers expect to be included in IEEE Xplore and submitted for indexing in DBLP, Scopus, Google Scholar, and EI etc. Top quality papers after presented in the conference will be selected for extension and publication in several special issues of international journals, e.g., World Wide Web Journal (Springer) Social Network Analysis and Mining (Springer) and Web Intelligence. So if you wish to simply attend, you have a chance to do so and hear it first before any of the content will appear online or elsewhere.

The 3-days event is taking place online via Zoom.

Please note, even if you are not presenting, you can attend and learn about the latest thinking and practice in behavioural and social computing. Attendance only is free but all participants will need to register via Registration for BESC2020.

We are looking forward to fruitful discussions with all our speakers and attendees,

BESC2020 organising committee

Psychological skills for health workers in Nepal

international, Knowledge Transfer

Yesterday  Dr. Shanti Shanker (Lecturer in Psychology), BU Visiting Faculty Jillian Ireland and I produced a short three-minute video for health care workers in Nepal on the topic of living with uncertainty and the COVID-19 virus. Hopefully this will be the first in a series from our Bournemouth University team.  The video is based on work funded by GCRF in the United Kingdom and supported by two NGOs (non-Governmental Organisations): (a) Sheetal Astitva and  (b) Green Taral Nepal as well as Symbiosis International (Deemed University).

This video can be accessed here!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH

Nepal publication: Smoking & suicide ideation

international, open access, Publishing, writing

Published earlier this week in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology a BU co-authored paper on ‘Cigarette smoking dose-response and suicidal ideation among young people in Nepal: a cross-sectional study’ [1].   The authors conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey with 452 young people in Nepal’s second largest city Pokhara.  The study matched participants by age and smoking status. The mean age was 21.6 years and 58.8% were males. The overall rate of suicidal ideation in our cohort was 8.9%. Smokers were slightly more likely to report suicidal ideation than non-smokers (aOR 1.12). The risk of developing suicidal ideation was 3.56 (95% CI 1.26-10.09) times more in individuals who smoked greater than 3.5 cigarettes per week (p=0.01).
The paper concludes that the rate of suicidal ideation was slightly higher among smokers and a dose-response relationship  existed linked with the number of cigarettes smoked per week. Being aware of the link between smoking and
suicidal ideation may help health care professionals working with young people to address more effectively the issues of mental well-being and thoughts about suicide.  The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is an Open Access journal hence this public health  paper is freely available to readers across the globe.

Reference:

  1. Sathian, B., Menezes, R.G., Asim, M., Mekkodathil, A., Sreedharan, J., Banerjee, I., van Teijlingen, E.R., Roy, B., Subramanya, S.H., .Kharoshah, M.A., Rajesh, E., Shetty, U., Arun, M., Ram, P., Srivastava, V.K. (2020) Cigarette smoking dose-response and suicidal ideation among young people in Nepal: a cross-sectional study, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 10 (1): 821-829 https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/28277

Congratulations to Psychology colleagues

open access, Publishing, writing

This week the journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth  accepted a new paper written by three Bournemouth University Psychologists.  The paper ‘Be Quiet and Man Up: A Qualitative Questionnaire Study into Men Who Experienced Birth Trauma’ is written by Emily Daniels, Emily Arden-Close and Andrew Mayers [1] . The paper, using online questionnaires, argues that fathers reported that witnessing their partner’s traumatic birth affected them. They felt this affected their mental health and relationships long into the postnatal period. However, there is no nationally recognised support in place for fathers to use as a result of their experiences. The participants attributed this to being perceived as less important than women in the postnatal period, and maternity services’ perceptions of the father more generally. Implications include ensuring support is available for mother and father following a traumatic birth, with additional staff training geared towards the father’s role.

This paper adds to the growing pool of publications by Bournemouth University staff on men and maternity care.  Earlier research work has been published in The Conversation [2] and  the Journal of Neonatal Nursing [3-4].

 

Well done!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal health (CMMPH) and Associate Editor BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth

 

References:

  1. Daniels, E., Arden-Close, E., Mayers, A. (2020)  Be Quiet and Man Up: A Qualitative Questionnaire Study into Men Who Experienced Birth Trauma, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth  (accepted).
  2. Mayers, A. (2017) Postnatal depression: men get it too, The Conversation, 20 November https://theconversation.com/postnatal-depression-men-get-it-too-87567
  3. Ireland, J., Khashu, M., Cescutti-Butler, L., van Teijlingen, E., Hewitt-Taylor, J. (2016) Experiences of fathers with babies admitted to neonatal care units: A review of the literature, Journal of Neonatal Nursing 22(4): 171–176.
  4. Fisher, D., Khashu, M, Adama, E, Feeley, N, Garfield, C, Ireland, J, Koliouli F, Lindberg, B., Noergaard, B., Provenzi, L., Thomson-Salo, F., van Teijlingen, E (2018) Fathers in neonatal units: Improving infant health by supporting the baby-father bond & mother-father co-parenting Journal of Neonatal Nursing 24(6): 306-312 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnn.2018.08.007